Sometimes, crumbs are more than enough: A Sermon for Proper 18B, 2018

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In addition to today being the Wisconsin Ironman Triathlon, it is in church parlance, the beginning of the program year. Our choir is back after its summer hiatus and Christian education for children and adults begins as well. This week, we are beginning something we’ve not done in quite some time at Grace, at least not on a regular, consistent basis. We will be offering two bible studies—one begins today, between the services; the other takes place on Thursday evening at 5:30. I hope some of you will take advantage of these opportunities, for engaging more deeply with scripture is essential to deepening your faith and your experience with Jesus Christ. Continue reading →

Pure and Undefiled Religion: A Sermon for Proper 17, Year B, 2018

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 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:

 

to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1:27)

What is pure and undefiled religion? What is religion? You might be surprised to know that this latter question is one that is much debated among contemporary scholars of religion. There’s an overwhelming consensus that what we in the west call “religion” and which we distinguish from other areas of life and culture, is very much a modern western concept that has been imposed on other cultures and peoples. So, for example, there is no term for religion in the languages of India, and when the British Empire came to the subcontinent, it categorized a certain number of activities and practices as religious and defined Hinduism as a religion.

No doubt you find it odd that I might begin a sermon by questioning the term religion. It very likely is, but as many of you know I was a professor of Religious Studies for fifteen years before becoming a full-time parish priest, and as a teacher and scholar, I was very much interested in the way scholars and ordinary people thought about the material I was teaching and studying How we as a culture define religion has an enormous impact on how we organize society and its institutions, how we negotiate among competing claims and values (think “church and state” for example, and how we regulate individual and community behavior. As individuals, how we define religion for ourselves, shapes not only our self-understanding, but helps to shape our identity as individuals and members of larger groups, and where we place our ultimate trust and value.

When I taught Intro to Religion, I would usually begin the first day by distributing to the students a handout with around 15 definitions of religion, derived from theologians and scholars of religion, anthropology, and sociology. It was an exercise intended to get students thinking about this cultural activity we call religion, and to challenge the way they thought about it. So, for example, the image posted above, the scene outside the church today, where we have a shrine erected to Wisconsin’s true religion.

I know this sounds all terribly abstract, but let me point out something important. The word “religion” in the verse I quoted a few minutes ago actually means devotion or worship. That puts a rather different spin on things, doesn’t it? “Worship that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to care for widow and orphans, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

That translation may be more puzzling than clarifying, because to us in the 21stcentury, none of that, caring for widows and orphans, or maintaining purity from the world, sounds like worship to us. Ethics, morality, maybe, derived from prior religious beliefs, but certainly not worship. I’d wager that when most of you heard that verse the first time, you got all excited, because James confirms the views of most progressive Christians. What matters is justice, outreach, advocacy for the poor and the oppressed, challenging new immigration policies, all of that.

The terms pure and undefiled, even unstained strike us strangely in our contemporary world, even if in the case of their appearance in the Letter of James, we can easily interpret them in ways that make them less, indeed even support our own personal preferences and commitments. When we see the same English word in the verses from the gospel of Mark that we heard this morning, we may have a slightly different reaction.

After all these weeks, we’re back in the gospel of Mark, where we will remain for the rest of the liturgical year, until the end of November. To recap a bit, so far in Jesus’ public ministry, we have seen him heal a number of people of their diseases and infirmities, cast out demons, walk on water, calm storms, and feed five thousand people. We haven’t been introduced to much of his teaching or preaching, one or two parables and that’s about it. As fast-paced as Mark is, the gospel will pick up in speed and intensity as we move inexorably toward Jesus’ final confrontation with the Roman authorities and their Jewish sycophants in Jerusalem. And in today’s reading, we see another aspect of the conflict between Jesus and other Jewish communities and leaders.

What’s at stake here, as it almost always is when Jesus is in conflict with other Jews in the gospels, is the interpretation and authority of Torah, Jewish law. The Pharisees were a group within Judaism that sought to extend the role of Torah to the daily life of ordinary people. Their interpretation of Torah was intended to offer guidance in what to do so that the central precepts of Torah were maintained. They called this “building a wall around Torah.” Take the 10 commandments: “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” Well, that’s great, but what does it mean to keep the Sabbath Day holy? The Pharisees explained that by offering guidance on what constituted work, and how much work one could do on the Sabbath.

In today’s gospel, the issue at hand is hand-washing. The Pharisees understood ritual hand-washing as keeping oneself ritually clean before eating; other Jewish groups saw things differently and Jesus’ disciples, apparently, couldn’t be bothered. It’s worth pointing out that the word translated as “defiled” here is a different word than the one used in James. Here, the word literally means “common” as distinguished from “sacred” or set apart.

Jesus’ answer, as it so often does, changes the terms of the debate. The issue is no longer whether or not to maintain ritual cleanliness, but the deeper meaning of defilement, or being “set apart.” Jesus points out that what matters is what is in the heart, not the particular ritual action, and here he lists all the ways in which we might defile ourselves by our thoughts.

And that may be where we come back to the letter of James and to our own context. In addition to the two funerals that played out in front of mass audiences over the last two days, religion has been very much in the news the past few weeks. There was the spectacle of a White House dinner for key evangelical supporters of the president early in the week; and the ongoing and deepening crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the former case, many people question the political choices of many Evangelical leaders. In the latter case, that of the Roman Catholic Church, with the crisis and cover-up extending to the highest levels of the Church, the institution is shaking to its very foundations, and the faith of many ordinary Catholics is wavering.

We might think that none of this matters to us here. But it does. All of it affects the general perception of Christianity in America and attitudes toward the institutional church. And we in the Episcopal Church are not immune either from the sin of sexual misconduct and cover-up or the temptation to cozy up to power and privilege.

The world is watching. As we struggle to make sense of what’s happening in this nation and around the world, as we struggle to find our own way in these difficult times, James offers us some simple advice. He reminds us where our focus should be and what the pitfalls are. It’s easy to look in a mirror, he says, to focus on ourselves, instead of looking to God. We should avoid criticizing others. He says that unbridled speech is worthless religion: good advice in the face of the noise, hate, and anger all around us now, that too often escalates from rhetoric to hateful action.

And he reminds us of our duty to care for the marginalized: widows and orphans, yes; but also all those who our society despises, rejects, and leaves behind. And finally, he admonishes us to keep ourselves unstained by the world. It may be unfamiliar, troubling language, but it’s worth exploring whether even this might provide us with guidance. Can we, by our actions, our words, our disposition, bear witness to the love, grace, and mercy of Christ, to a world that too often sees Christians and Christianity in very different terms. Can we, by our actions and words, change our homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces for the better?

 

 

 

Where would we go? A Sermon for Proper 16, Year B, 2018

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 There’s something about natural disasters that brings out the best in people. Of course there are always scammers, those who seek to take advantage of vulnerable people but the reality is that we tend to come together when we are faced with difficult situations brought about by events that are out of control. We help each other, but we also want to share stories, tell of our experiences and listen as others share their experiences as well. We do it on social media but we also do it when we’re going about the daily business of life. We chat with cashiers or fellow customers about what we’ve seen and experienced, and what’s happening elsewhere.  Many of us also volunteer, filling sandbags, or helping to clean out neighbors’ or family members’ basements after the flood.

Such spontaneous community is increasingly rare in our society and culture. In our divided nation, and with the fragmentation brought on by the many cultural changes that we’ve seen over the last decades, it often takes a natural disaster like a flood to draw our attention away from the immediate concerns of our own lives and focus for a time on the larger questions and larger drama of human existence.

As we have read John 6 these last few weeks, we have seen a somewhat similar dynamic play itself out. The chapter begins with the miracle of the feeding of the 5000. Imagine the excitement, the conversations among those who experienced the miraculous appearance of food. Imagine the stories they would tell to their children, grandchildren, neighbors and friends!

But the scene and the energy quickly shift. We see dialogue, conversation, and finally, conflict, as Jesus’ dialogue partners become increasingly critical of his statements. And now finally this:

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’ 

We’re told that the scene has shifted in another way. Whoever Jesus had been talking with earlier in the chapter—when was he addressing the whole crowd? And when did it become a smaller group? Now he has moved into the synagogue and is speaking with the congregation gathered there.

And another set of characters is introduced—the disciples. So the group of those with whom Jesus had been talking has become smaller, more intimate, more deeply connected with Jesus. They were those who had been following him since the beginning, or had joined the group along the way somewhere. But this is a hard saying—it’s more than a “hard saying” it’s a scandal, an offense, the Greek word from which we derive scandal is used here.

So some of them turn away—not the vast crowd that had been fed bread and fishes; nor even those who had listened to Jesus speaking in the synagogue. Now, some of those who turned away were his disciples—men and women who knew him, had followed him thus far, had listened and learned. But the circle grows even smaller. Jesus gathers his closest companions to him, for the first time in the Gospel, there’s a reference to the “twelve.” It’s a term that appears very infrequently in the Gospel of John. Jesus turns to them and asks: “Do you also wish to go away?”

In the last two verses of the chapter, there’s an ominous note-a reminder that not even the twelve could remain with Jesus to the end—The gospel writer mentions Judas by name and his betrayal of Jesus.

The reference to Judas is a reminder to us that when Jesus speaks of his body and blood, he is not speaking only of the Eucharist, but also of his crucifixion and resurrection. It’s no accident, nor is it insignificant that in our Eucharistic prayers, going back to Paul’s account of it in 1 Corinthians, we begin the words of institution with “On the night on which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread…”

But there’s more for us to think about here. Jesus is not speaking only of the Eucharist. He is also speaking of himself. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, abide in me and I in them. Discipleship in the Gospel of John is about relationship with Jesus. Throughout the gospel, from the very first chapter, those who follow Jesus are invited to abide with him, to be with him.

In today’s gospel, Jesus’ listeners are presented with a choice. They can turn away or reject him, or they can listen to him, hear his words, and follow him. It’s not a yes or no choice. After some of those who had followed him walk away, Jesus asks those who remain, “Do you also wish to go away?”

Peter’s answer isn’t yes or no. Having walked with Jesus thus far, he can’t imagine life without him. “To whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter has already experienced relationship with Jesus, abiding with him, and the prospect of life without him is incomprehensible. Jesus’ words are eternal life; his words are spirit, all else seems empty in comparison.

Now the Gospel of John has the characteristic that simple ideas, words, concepts can suddenly seem to be remotely abstract, foreign to our experience and lives. Spending time in the gospel of John can be disorienting and alienating. The words wash over us. We have, after all, been spending five weeks hearing this chapter from John’s gospel. If you read it through in one sitting, it comes across as repetitive, to some, even nonsensical. Many of us, including your preacher, will be happy to return to Mark next week, whose language and message is much clearer, though perhaps equally difficult to make one’s own.

What matters above all in John, once we cut through the verbiage, is relationship. What matters is the life-giving relationship with Jesus Christ, offered by Christ. What matters is the experience of abiding with him as he abides with us. John is trying to help us understand, but more importantly to experience, the life that he experienced with Jesus Christ. All of the language, all of the discourses, all of Jesus’ miracles, are directed toward this.

Most of us struggle with our faith. Most of us wonder at times, if God exists, whether Jesus was the Son of God, or whether he truly was raised from the dead. We wonder about heaven and hell. We have lots of questions, doubts, uncertainties. Some of us probably aren’t even sure why we bother coming to church. Does any of it matter? Is any of it true?

But there is something that draws us here, something that speaks to our deepest yearnings and hopes. We might not even be able to articulate or name what it is. We come here and find something. For the Gospel of John, what we find here is relationship, life. We experience in the community gathered, in the bread and wine, in the word read and proclaimed, in all of that, we experience life. Jesus offers us that life. He invites us to stay, to abide with him, to live in him as he lives in us. When we say yes to him, we are not proving an argument or saying yes to a proposition. We are inviting and experiencing relationship. When say yes to him, we say yes to life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eating Christ’s body, being Christ’s body: A Sermon for Proper 15, Year B, 2018

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 Note: This is the text as I prepared it. However, the preaching moment was rather different. Instead of sharing a bit of my story in the second half of the sermon, I invited the congregation to ask questions about the Eucharist. At both services we had lively conversations about transubstantiation, about what happens if one receives “unworthily” (I Corinthians 11), about communion without baptism.

Jesus says many strange things in the Gospel of John. Many of these sayings are so strange that we don’t pay attention to them anymore. Often, the Christian Church has interpreted them in such a way to make them less strange and those interpretations have become so fixed, that many of us don’t experience or encounter their strangeness. And when we encounter people in the text puzzled by what Jesus is saying, we think they are being willfully obtuse. So in chapter 3, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again (or from above)” And Nicodemus responds, “How can someone enter their mother’s womb again?” Continue reading →

Is Madison a “people” city or a “market” city?

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Madison is gearing up for a mayoral election next year and it’s likely much of the campaign  will focus on the candidates’ vision for our city’s future. I came across this interview with one of the authors of Market Cities, People Cities and thought it offered insight into how we ought to think about Madison’s present and future:

When market cities are asked, “What’s the purpose of a city?” they say it’s to create jobs, to lure companies, to create regional wealth — and that is going to make a healthy, vibrant economy, and then life is good.

A people city will say the purpose of a city is to create a high quality of life for its citizens and to create equality between its citizens — to make life livable, healthy and sustainable.

That different assumption about what the city is for creates extremely different outcomes — from the city’s priorities to how it spends money to what it will decide when it’s forced to make decisions, which it always is.

[Residents] have a very different experience of living in these different kinds of cities.

Read the full interview here:

 

 

Wonder Bread: A Sermon for Proper 13, Year B, 2018

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Bread. Think about all the different types of bread there are—the mundane, for example, the ironically-named “wonder bread.” Or what passes for bread in our celebrations of the eucharist—little discs of hard, tasteless, baked wheat. Think of the best bread you’ve ever had—home-baked right out of the oven, or crusty French baguette, eaten with olive oil and a glass of wine. Bread comes in many shapes and sizes, made with thousands of different ingredients, deriving from vastly different cultures and culinary traditions. Life without bread is unimaginable, even for those who are gluten-intolerant, or have celiac disease. There are breads made for them as well. Like wonder bread or the hosts we use in the Eucharist, bread can be industrialized and standardized. But at its best bread reflects the baker, the ingredients, the oven, and the community in which it is baked and the community which, when bread is broken, it creates. Continue reading →

The erasure of sacred space at the Dane County Jail

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On Sunday afternoon, I attended a spirited conversation of clergy and formerly incarcerated persons discussing the importance of spiritual care and sacred space in institutions of incarceration. The Dane County Jail is about to undergo long overdue renovations with a price tag of $76 million. It has come to the attention of chaplains and community members that current plans do not include dedicated space for worship or other religious gatherings.

On one level, this erasure of sacred space from the jail could be seen as another example of the departure of religion from public life and a sign of its waning significance in American culture. With fewer people participating in organized religion, why bother spending money on a space dedicated to worship and spiritual reflection? Religion and spirituality are simply a lower priority than other uses—such as mental health, physical fitness, and the like.

But I think there is something more significant at play. One of the themes that emerged from the panel discussion was the uniqueness of sacred space in an institution of incarceration. “Sacred” comes from a Latin word which means “to set apart.” In an institution where every aspect of one’s life is monitored, where one has no privacy, no silence, where surveillance is constant and absolute, having a place apart from that where one can attend to one’s spiritual needs without interruption or intrusion, is space that is at least for a brief time each week, free from the power of the carceral state.

In sacred space, people can sit, pray, worship. They can be still and know God. They can listen to the rhythms of their hearts, the yearnings of their souls, without the distraction of noise from people in the surrounding bunks. In sacred space, they can sense the moving of the Spirit in their lives, and respond accordingly. In sacred space, they can draw strength from others who are seeking the same solace, and receive counsel from supportive chaplains.

Representatives of the Sheriff’s office argue that there simply isn’t enough space, that other needs take precedence—medical beds, mental health, addiction. To separate out spiritual needs from other needs is misguided and unfortunate. In many cultures, spiritual health is deeply connected to mental health and physical health; one can’t heal the body without healing the soul, and if the soul doesn’t receive the attention it needs, neither body or mind can be fully healed.

It was clear from the formerly incarcerated people who spoke on Sunday, and clear too from my many conversations with formerly incarcerated persons, that many interpret their journeys spiritually, that they see the decisions they made that brought them into contact with the criminal justice system, and their experience in prison and jail, in spiritual terms. They see God at work in their lives, or their punishment as connected with their own sins and God’s forgiveness. To deny them space in the Dane County Jail to process their lives spiritually, to connect with others who are sharing similar journeys, and to find the solace provided by a religious tradition, is to rob them of one of the most important resources they need to transform their lives.

It’s unfortunate that the Dane County Sheriff’s Office and our Dane County elected officials do not care enough for the men and women incarcerated here that they are willing to commit resources to meet the spiritual needs of jail residents.

The Capital Times’s coverage of the Sunday event is here.

More background from Isthmus here.

The campaign to accommodate spiritual needs at the Dance County Jail has a facebook page.

Feeding bodies, sharing God’s presence: A Sermon for Proper 12, Year B, 2018

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Jesus worked miracles—signs, to use the language of the Gospel of John. This fact is the sort of thing that can make twenty-first century Christians squirm in their pews. Oh, I know, most of us probably would say sure, Jesus did some amazing things, but magically creating so much bread and fish that 5000 people were fed, that there were enough leftovers to fill 12 baskets, is just a little bit beyond the realm of belief. And that Jesus walked on water? That story is so farfetched that it’s become symbol of unbelievable holiness or perfection. We say of someone who’s just perfect in every way, “They walk on water.” Continue reading →

Are we prophets? Are we prophets’ children? A Sermon for Proper 10B, 2018

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I get uncomfortable whenever I hear progressive Christians talking about being prophetic. In my experience, it usually means little more than making political statements that have more to do with American partisan politics than with the Good News of Jesus Christ. But that’s only one of the ways in which Christians misread the traditions of biblical prophecy.

We tend to see the prophets through the eyes of Handel’s Messiah or the birth narratives of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. On this view, the prophets were mostly about predicting the coming of the Messiah, and their importance for Christians lies in the fact that the appearance of Jesus is both a confirmation of their predictions, and that they offer key insights into who and what Jesus is.  Continue reading →

St. Paul’s conflicts and our own: A sermon on Prayer Book Revision for Proper 9B, 2018

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The General Convention of the Episcopal Church is gathering in Austin, TX. It takes place every three years, bringing together bishops, lay and clerical deputies from every diocese to oversee the life of our church. It is the ultimate governing authority of the Episcopal Church, so it has the final say over matters of doctrine, governance, and even our worship.

On Friday, the House of Deputies passed a resolution authorizing comprehensive revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Last accomplished in 1979, prayer book revision is always challenging, time-consuming, full of conflict. While the current timeline suggests the completion of the work in a decade or so, it may be that like our conversations and conflicts over the full inclusion of LGBT people in the life of the church, including marriage, will dominate our common life as a denomination for the next decade. It’s worth pointing out that for this process to move forward, the House of Bishops will also have to approve the resolution for prayer book revision.

If you are interested in these matters, I invite you to join me later this morning in the library where I will answer questions and offer opportunity for your reflections. In the meantime, I would like to ask you a few questions:

  • How many of you own a book of common prayer?
  • For those of you who own one, do you know where it is? When was the last time you opened it?

In my experience as an Episcopalian, lay and priest, it’s my sense that we tend to have a great emotional attachment to the book of common prayer as a symbol, and also to the language of the liturgy, but that most of us don’t engage with it in any significant way in our personal spiritual lives or with the theological perspectives offered there. That is to say, we are not “shaped” by its theology and spirituality, as we are intended to be.

The presenting issues for revision are fairly clear. Many of us struggle with the gendered language in the liturgy and in the Psalter, and we also struggle with the patriarchal and hierarchical language. In addition, there are debates about the revising the marriage rite in the BCP to make it inclusive of same gender couples. But once you begin looking at revising the text, certain theological debates will quickly explode—the atonement, for example.

So, we are going to be enmeshed in conversation and most likely conflict in the coming years as we discuss and implement liturgical revision. It’s going to be heated, both on the denominational level, and quite likely, here at Grace, and thinking about how we have those conversations, how disagree with each other, will be an important part of the process.

It’s fortunate, then, that we have before us this reading from Paul’s second letter to the Church at Corinth. For in it he discusses both his own spiritual experience and addresses the deep and bitter conflict in which he has been engaged with this little group of Christians he founded years earlier.

We are coming to the end of a series of selections from this text. I’ve not referred to it in past sermons because, well, it is a complicated text in its theology, in its underlying context, and in its very construction. Most scholars agree that it is a composite text, made up of portions of several letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthian community. They also agree that what we read in this letter is evidence of a deep and painful conflict between Paul and the community in Corinth which he founded. The conflict was personal, having to do with the nature of Paul’s authority and personality.

Today’s reading gets at the heart of that conflict. Part of what was at stake was spiritual experience and the role of spiritual experience in establishing one’s religious authority. The Corinthians, or at least some of them, seemed to believe that unless one had the sort of ecstatic experience that expressed itself speaking in tongues or the like, one had no basis from which to preach the gospel.

This is Paul’s response. It began in the previous chapter with Paul speaking ironically about boasting about his spiritual gifts. Now, he is speaking directly about his own experience. He describes a mystical experience, perhaps even a vision, or a mystical journey to the heavens, where he encountered Jesus Christ and received private revelations. But, he says, no matter how wonderful or powerful that experience was, it isn’t the basis for his proclamation of the gospel or his authority.

He then describes something else, something very different. It’s some sort of physical ailment, a thorn in the flesh, that troubled him for many years. Repeatedly, he prayed for deliverance from this affliction. Instead of healing, he received another message from Jesus Christ, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

If there is any phrase that could encapsulate Paul’s understanding of the gospel, it is this: “power made perfect in weakness.” It is central to his understanding of the cross. Paul writes eloquently about this in 1 Corinthians when he talks about the foolishness of the cross, “For God’s foolishness is s wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

This understanding, this paradox, is the heart of the good news. We want Jesus to perform deeds of power in our midst, we want our prayers answered, our lives, our world changed by the encounter with the good news of Jesus Christ. We want, yes, we do, we want to get the kind of spiritual high at church that Paul describes. And if those things don’t come, we are disappointed and disheartened.

Like the people of Jesus’ hometown, we want him to do the kinds of things among us that we heard about him doing elsewhere. And when that doesn’t happen, our faith wavers. But the cross reminds us that Jesus’ power and victory are not according to the world’s standards. The cross is foolishness and a scandal, power made perfect in weakness.

We want Jesus to be a superhero, or at least a superstar. Instead, we follow one who carried his cross to Calvary, and stumbled along the way. We want miracles, deliverance, a problem solver, a fix-it man. Instead, we have Jesus, who couldn’t work deeds of power in his own hometown.

So what’s the point, you ask. Precisely that. Scripture, the gospels bear witness to a Jesus, a Messiah, who doesn’t swoop in from outside and fix everything, a Messiah who doesn’t call on legions of angels to rescue him from execution. The gospel, Paul, proclaim a Messiah who is born like we are, frail and needy, and died just as all humans die. In that Messiah, in his incarnation and death, we see God, power made perfect in weakness.

We see a God, born like us, with our flesh and blood, with all that it means. We see a God who knows us in our frailty and humanity, comes to us in our frailty and humanity and says to us, “my grace is sufficient for you.”

Sometimes, we think we know it all. Sometimes, we think our perspective is the right one, the only legitimate one. Certainly, Paul thought that a great deal of the time. But at the heart of this text is a very different experience and understanding—that power is made perfect in weakness; that in Christ’s weakness and suffering, we see God. Paul was trying to say that what mattered most was not education, or background, or intellectual capacity, or ability to debate and score points. What matters most is Christ crucified.

It’s an important, perhaps the most important thing to comprehend as we try to grow more deeply in our Christian faith; but it may also be the most important thing to remember as we engage in conversation and find ourselves in disagreement with our fellow Christians. To be open and vulnerable to them, to recognize, like Paul, that whatever the experience and knowledge we have from Christ, there are things about it we can’t share with others, parts of it we can’t describe or name.

And to bring that openness and vulnerability as we listen to each other, as we hear their experiences, their joy and pain, may help us all of us to grow more deeply in the knowledge and love of God in Jesus Christ. I hope we experience this next season in the life of our congregation and the larger church as an opportunity for growth and building deeper relationships among ourselves and through those experiences to welcome and embrace those who seek to walk with us on this journey.